Turning Stone - rip off

Paul Schofield said:
The Turning Stone Entry Policy is a good one. The tournament is one of the few events that fills months in advance. If the policy is to do refunds, the players will pay their entry early and decide later if they are going to play. I run a popular regional quarterly event for the first 64 paid entries. My event always filled in days after it was announced. Then the withdraws came in as the event neared. One time, twenty-two players had withdrawn by tournament time. Finally, I had enough. These players discouraged legitimate entries, and created more work and confusion, not to mention that players are hesitant to go on a waiting list (they need to plan too.) The Turning Stone Promoter has it right.
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You know, I never looked at it that way, but you are right. It would be confusing as heck, and it would make it too easy for people to pull out if they are guaranteed a refund.

I get it now. Sorry, Cleary. They are right. Though I can see why you'd be upset to not get a refund, I understand the other side better now. Paul spelled it out perfectly.
 
JAM said:
And this is what pool should be all about. Fun! Why play pool if it's going to be an unpleasant experience?



Best fun I ever had in pool was when I played on the leagues. :cool:
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Playing league round my parts would be the most torturous thing I could imagine.....brutal nittery. Lol.


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greyghost said:
Playing league round my parts would be the most torturous thing I could imagine.....brutal nittery. Lol.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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On the leagues, they play for the almighty win, which is worth more than money to some folk.

Then there's money won is sweeter than money earned philosophy, which also holds true.

As Ronnie Wiseman says, everything is funny when you're winning big money and running racks, but when you get sick, go broke, go to jail, or can't run a rack anymore, one discovers the meaning of life real quick. And pool doesn't even enter the equation. :p
 
JAM said:
You know, I never looked at it that way, but you are right. It would be confusing as heck, and it would make it too easy for people to pull out if they are guaranteed a refund.

I get it now. Sorry, Cleary. They are right. Though I can see why you'd be upset to not get a refund, I understand the other side better now. Paul spelled it out perfectly.
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Call me crazy, but I don't think it would be so horrible for him to say to someone "look, you have a good and legit excuse... I can't offer you a refund but I can offer you a credit towards a future event. If you back out of that after you've committed... sorry. But it's the most I can do." You know, to just be human about it. Is that really so terrible?
 
cleary said:
Call me crazy, but I don't think it would be so horrible for him to say to someone "look, you have a good and legit excuse... I can't offer you a refund but I can offer you a credit towards a future event. If you back out of that after you've committed... sorry. But it's the most I can do." You know, to just be human about it. Is that really so terrible?
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Doesn't sound too bad until one guy gets a refund and the other doesn't.
 
KissedOut said:
Only in the world of pool is the moral authority of someone's actions and statements based on how well they play.
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Actually no. But you have to question their credibility when they say they're in the 550 range of the fargo ratings yet can't even shoot a simple 8 ball shot to get on the simple 9 ball on their 6th or 7th trip to the table. Yeah, that shot can be missed out of carelessness, but who in the heck is that careless in tournament play after having such a difficult time making other simple straight ins right before hand?
 
trifectasss said:
Actually no. But you have to question their credibility when they say they're in the 550 range of the fargo ratings yet can't even shoot a simple 8 ball shot to get on the simple 9 ball on their 6th or 7th trip to the table. Yeah, that shot can be missed out of carelessness, but who in the heck is that careless in tournament play after having such a difficult time making other simple straight ins right before hand?
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Ever see some of those stupid answers on quiz shows?
...they're probably not that dumb....but inexperienced being on stage.

So even though I disagree with the OP's 'rip off'' premise....
...I can give him a little bad match leeway....
...after all, Alex has been performing in fron of cameras for over half his life....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfatlZSLCvU
 
pt109 said:
Ever see some of those stupid answers on quiz shows?
...they're probably not that dumb....but inexperienced being on stage.

So even though I disagree with the OP's 'rip off'' premise....
...I can give him a little bad match leeway....
...after all, Alex has been performing in fron of cameras for over half his life....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfatlZSLCvU
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I am the poster child for inconsistency. I probably have more bad days than most posters on here. However I dont think even on my bad days I played as bad as Cleary did in the video that was deleted

Most of his shots were semi warp speed. As was deleted in mikes post. Unbelievable that he hit the 6 ball at warp speed ...missed the corner pocket by a diamond and the cue ball and the 6 ball collided 3 times while both balls bounced around the table.

As I stated in my op ...some 3's around here shoot better than that. I will say that Cleary shot a whole lot better in the video he posted of playing the 9 ball ghost on his home table.

Like I said...every one has bad days but.....man that was brutal in that video that was deleted lol
 
Since its Oscars and my child's birth that has been brought up several times, figured I would address it since Oscar doesn't come on AZ.

We attended the January event, before learning we were pregnant. Ernesto and Oscar both paid their entries at the event for the August- Sept event.

Im due September 16th. Ernesto and Oscar both planned on still attending the event until our OBGYN informed us that due to some medical issues, our child may have to be delivered 2-3 weeks early.

Oscar emailed Mike from the parking lot of the doctors office. He didn't ask for a refund, just to transfer their spots over to the January event. He was told no with a "sorry for your predicament".

Not going to get into who was wrong or right, but it was disappointing for sure.
 
MWST_Desiree said:
Since its Oscars and my child's birth that has been brought up several times, figured I would address it since Oscar doesn't come on AZ.

We attended the January event, before learning we were pregnant. Ernesto and Oscar both paid their entries at the event for the August- Sept event.

Im due September 16th. Ernesto and Oscar both planned on still attending the event until our OBGYN informed us that due to some medical issues, our child may have to be delivered 2-3 weeks early.

Oscar emailed Mike from the parking lot of the doctors office. He didn't ask for a refund, just to transfer their spots over to the January event. He was told no with a "sorry for your predicament".

Not going to get into who was wrong or right, but it was disappointing for sure.
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Kinda sad story bro. Good luck in January ! !!!
 
cleary said:
Just gave someone from the Turning Stone players list 2 on 9 and won 3 sets. Thanks for the motivation $$$. #sub500
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Crickets from Mike Page since you posted those other videos. Maybe he is finally relooking at his fargorate equation, trying to figure out where it went wrong.

.....no, no, no.
 
MWST_Desiree said:
Since its Oscars and my child's birth that has been brought up several times, figured I would address it since Oscar doesn't come on AZ.

We attended the January event, before learning we were pregnant. Ernesto and Oscar both paid their entries at the event for the August- Sept event.

Im due September 16th. Ernesto and Oscar both planned on still attending the event until our OBGYN informed us that due to some medical issues, our child may have to be delivered 2-3 weeks early.

Oscar emailed Mike from the parking lot of the doctors office. He didn't ask for a refund, just to transfer their spots over to the January event. He was told no with a "sorry for your predicament".

Not going to get into who was wrong or right, but it was disappointing for sure.
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Desiree,

Was so nice meeting you at Griff's in Vegas. We spoke about the "Turtle" rack I wished to try. Anyway, sincerely hope everything goes well for you and Oscar. Hope one of the pool rooms in Vegas hosts a MWST event. Would like to play. Tired of watching on the stream!

Lyn
 
BmoreMoney said:
I actually never heard this, who was accused of stealing the purse?
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Leon Mroz. Its been 15 years now, but this is what I recall: Every event in the tour kept a small amount from the entry that would go into the pot for the year end championship event, so it would have a much bigger payday. Leon took all of this money he was holding, and dumped it to the casinos. Then, he held the championship event, and didn't have the cash to pay the winners, and stiffed all or most of them.

Here is a thread about it I found 2 or 3 years after it happened:

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=12328

From what I found out locally just now, he actually tracked down the players he still owed many, many years later, and paid them.

It seems like he meant well, but allowed his personal gambling issues to cloud his judgment, and piss away money that wasn't his.

I played in several of his stops at the time, but was not at the championship event myself.
 
watchez said:
When did I ever say I was gonna transfer my skills to the pool player? YOu have a habit of misreading my words whcih are generally pretty clear.
I stated I put my efforts into something else besides pool cause it just isn't worth it in pool.
Could I do it. YES.
Would I be successful. YES.
Would I change the way pool tourneys are run and formatted. YES
Will I do it. NO

It hasn't all been perfect for me and I have made judgement errors. The biggest was when a private individual came to me and said he wanted to sponsor an event, adding $10K. The first year, he did it with no issues. The second year, he went awol and left me hanging.

What did I do? I pulled the 10k out of my own pocket and added it to the event. Why? Cause my name was on it and I like to keep my name clean plus it was my mistake for trusting someone who I thought beyond everything else, was a friend. And I didn't make a big issue out of it, not one player knew at the time of the event as I didn't want to distract from it.

Now what would have happened in the pool world? The tournament director would have said, sorry everyone, the money isn't there. But thanks for coming out anyways. And some people, like the ones in this thread that don't get that double dipping entry fees is shady, would stand behind a tournament director/promoter not adding the money he promised cause he had an excuse to do so. And I can give you plenty of examples in pool where this has happened and people let it go.
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Sorry, I was a bit confrontational in my post. This thread got the best of me, and I'm bowing out after clarifying what I meant to you....

The point I was trying to make, was IMO, you were presenting a position of authority throughout this pool tournament thread, because you have had success on a non-pool tournament venture. And based on this presented authority, your opinion of Zuglan's policy holds more merit than random xyz poster in this thread.

My main point, is skills from non-pool related ventures, are not transferrable to pool related ventures.

Its not a knock on you personally. Its a knock on our game. Many people over many decades, from other industries, tried to come over to our game and make something happen. They all went away after a year or two. We are talking about smart and successful people in other businesses.

So I think its human nature and valid for you to say Zuglan is ethically wrong here, and that you do things differently in your non-pool venture. But if you did a pool-venture, and had to deal with all of the pool cry babies, I think you might change your mind over time, and come up with more rigid rules like Zuglan has.

Peace out, hit the balls well:)
 
iusedtoberich said:
Sorry, I was a bit confrontational in my post. This thread got the best of me, and I'm bowing out after clarifying what I meant to you....

The point I was trying to make, was IMO, you were presenting a position of authority throughout this pool tournament thread, because you have had success on a non-pool tournament venture. And based on this presented authority, your opinion of Zuglan's policy holds more merit than random xyz poster in this thread.

My main point, is skills from non-pool related ventures, are not transferrable to pool related ventures.

Its not a knock on you personally. Its a knock on our game. Many people over many decades, from other industries, tried to come over to our game and make something happen. They all went away after a year or two. We are talking about smart and successful people in other businesses.

So I think its human nature and valid for you to say Zuglan is ethically wrong here, and that you do things differently in your non-pool venture. But if you did a pool-venture, and had to deal with all of the pool cry babies, I think you might change your mind over time, and come up with more rigid rules like Zuglan has.

Peace out, hit the balls well:)
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I think just the opposite. To me, many of the failures in pool come from people putting their faith in someone just because they can draw their ball. This runs across all pool enterprises to include not only pool tourneys, pool rooms and pro pool player organizations. Of course there are examples of when the people that can draw their. All know what they are doing such as the Mezz West Tour, Freezers pool room, never been but I hear Mike Page pool room is special and there are other examples of that have worked. But then you have the incident at the 14.1 tourney between Shaw and Earl. Completely mishandled cause the guy that can draw his ball doesn't know how to run a real event. I could list 100 examples.

Beyond that, this is 2017 and a good majority of events don't even have something basic like online brackets. Some brackets I see for a MAJOR event each year (run by someone that has posted in this thread) are literally written on a piece of scratch paper. Why? Cause the pool world has learned to "settle". Be happy with what you have and don't expect or ask for better. We need people like Cleary to point out when something isn't right and to move to make it better. And beat that dead horse cause it is gonna take a long time to get the "settling" mentality out of people.

Beyond that, I've been around pool almost 30 years. I saw and watched what was good and bad. Then I took it my venture and made it good. And I can tell you live tournaments for video golf were almost completely dead when we started. We brought em back and made them 10 times better. I could do the same for pool. No preoblemo.
 
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Fargo, whether it's accurate or not, measures match/tournament performance, not spot shot drill or playing the ghost performance. If the best player in the world doesn't bring it playing a real opponent, you're not going to have a good rating.
 
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